


Of Love In The Time Of Whos

by lindsey_grissom



Category: How the Grinch Stole Christmas! - Dr. Seuss
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-22
Updated: 2011-05-22
Packaged: 2017-10-19 17:09:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/203188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lindsey_grissom/pseuds/lindsey_grissom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A familiar story:  Boy meets girl, boy and girl fall in love, boy moves to mountain, boy steals Christmas, boy comes back and steals girl.  Oh, and boy is green and hairy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Love In The Time Of Whos

**i.**

Martha May Whovier is three years old when she sees the love of her life for the very first time.

Standing with her small hand clasped in her mother's, Martha looks around herself; it's nearly Christmas again and Whoville is starting to light up under the early decorations.

Whoville always seems pretty to Martha, but she hardly remembers last Christmas and the transformation has her eyes blowing wide with excitement.

She's looking at the giant candy cane slowly being hauled up in the center of town, when her gaze flickers and there he is.

She sees him as a kind of blur. Two women drag him between them as they leave the bakery, boxes of treats clenched in their other hands and Martha watches them sweep past her on the other side of the street.

He's wearing a blue suit and when he sees something he likes up ahead, he smiles.

The women, his parents she learns later, pull him around the corner and Martha's mother leads her home.

"When can I get married?" She asks her father that night. He laughs and she doesn't really know why, but she's happy when he's happy and she crawls up onto his lap with a giggle.

"When you grow into your nose." He says, rubbing it with his own well-pointed one.

She sighs and snuggles into him. She will marry him, that boy she saw, she thinks, because everyone grows into their noses eventually.

***

 **ii.**

The Grinch doesn't like to play. In fact, he doesn't even like the word play.

Whenever the other boys make him join in, he's always the baddy, the scary nasty monster that everyone else runs away from. He doesn't like that. The screaming gives him a headache.

One time they play a game that involves counting and he enjoys that for a while; he's good at that. But then it gets boring, so he stops.

He meets her by the little wooden benches in the playground. He sees the way the sunlight makes her hair shine and how her frilly dress spins out around her when she turns and he’s so focused on that, he misses the little step up between the path and the playground and goes tumbling down.

He lands at her shiny red shoes.

He looks up, past her white socks and her pink knees and the folds of her dress. She looks down at him, one gloved hand covering her mouth, the other held out towards him.

"Are you okay?" She asks and he opens his mouth but nothing comes out. He frowns, trying again, but the same thing happens. Pushing himself onto his knees he coughs loudly and pokes at his throat with a finger.

She watches him, titling her head to the side, both hands falling to her sides.

'I’m fine'. He wants to say, but he can't even mouth the words properly and his voice never makes it out of his body.

She giggles, like a bell ringing and somehow, he doesn't think she's actually laughing at him, not like some of the other children do. And then a bell does ring and she turns away to look at where the teachers have gathered to take them all in.

"Come on Martha!" She's pulled away by another girl, one not half as pretty in his opinion and he watches her go. She looks back at him once, over her shoulder, before she disappears into the crowd.

He stays where he is on the floor until everyone has gone inside. Inside his chest something thumps heavily and the Grinch is late for his very first day of school.

 

***

 

 **iii.**

He's different. Martha notices that right away. There's just something about him that makes him stand out from every other eight year old boy in Whoville.

When the other boys play with the balls on the field, Martha knows not to look for him there. She knows that if she wants to find him, which she doesn't always do because sometimes her friends bring in the skipping rope and she's not going to go looking for any boy when she could be skipping, then she has to go to the back of the field where the trees bend over and twist around. She knows that if she peers in between the big green leaves she'll find him there reading.

When they have show and tell he brings in amazing things made of metal and springs that move and one time chased Augustus out of the classroom and around the school until it ran out of power and Augustus cried so much Mrs Hayloo had to call his mother.

He's really smart too. He nearly always gets his questions right and the little dance he does when he wins the end of week competition makes Martha smile.

One day, when she gets tired of watching the boys glare at him as they walk past and her brow creases when one of the older girls edges around where he’s sitting, playing with a little toy robot, Martha asks her friends why no one ever plays with him.

"He’s different." Jessie-Lou says and Martha nods. She knows that.

"He’s just so...so...green!" Betty shouts. "And hairy and dirty and..."

Martha doesn't really hear anything else because she looks at him again and he looks up and even though his shoulders are hunched over he still smiles at her. He waves at her and Martha waves back.

She doesn't think he’s dirty, or too hairy and of course he's green, but that doesn't matter, because there's something different about him and it isn't that.

 

***

 

 **iv.**

He kisses her once. Just once. Underneath the mistletoe in the dark at the Mayor's Christmas party.

It's ten years to the day since he left Whoville; ran away from the laughter and jeering. He's eighteen years old and independent. He doesn't need anyone.

But he comes back for the Christmas party. He wears a disguise of course; you can't run away to make a point and then just stroll back.

He hides himself behind a full mask, finds some black gloves in the rubbish laying around Mount Crumpit and shoves his hair into a top hat. He looks ridiculous, but it's a masked ball and no one will ever know.

Martha May doesn't have as good a disguise as he does and he spots her straight away. He doesn't go near her though, because she's surrounded by her friends and he looks away from her every now and again so she won't feel like someone is watching her.

She's beautiful. He doesn't like to think it, because that's a kind of 'warm' feeling and he swore off those when he left, but she is.

Her nose still doesn't point out quite the same way as everyone else's. He's glad; it lets him pretend that they have something in common, that they're both different.

The speeches are made and the cake is cut and then the lights dim and the band starts up again. Whos start dancing everywhere and for a moment, he loses sight of her.

It's some kind of instinct that leads him out onto one of the emptier balconies where she stands, hands curled against the stone wall.

He wonders what she can be looking at with such intensity when there's only Mount Crumpit to see in that direction.

"Merry Christmas." She whispers and when she turns around she jumps and squeaks, seeing him for the first time.

He bows at her, because even now after all this time, when he opens his mouth, nothing comes out.

"I didn't hear you." She says, and her cheeks flush a light pink.

She has to pass him to get back into the ballroom and just as she crosses into the doorway he catches sight of the little bundle of green above them.

He stops her with a hand on her wrist; it's the first time he's touched anyone in seven years.

She looks up at him and he doesn't really think about it, because he's thought about doing this too much already.

"Close your eyes." He says, and if her eyes grow a little wide it can't be from recognition because his voice stopped breaking this last year and besides, why would Martha May remember him?

She closes her eyes after only a moment of hesitation and because there's no one else around them anymore, he pulls his mask off quickly, bends his head and presses his lips to hers.

She tastes like cinnamon.

He hasn't ever kissed anyone before but he likes it.

Martha gasps a little and before she can open her eyes he pulls back and shoves his mask back over his face.

He turns his back on her and runs.

He knows she doesn't say his name, but his mind likes to play dirty tricks on him.

He doesn't go to another Christmas party. He doesn't go to Whoville and he doesn't think about Martha May.

Only two of those are true.

***

 **v.**

"Are you going to run away this time?" She asks him, when everyone has left and all that remains of the celebration is an empty table and a lot of festive spirit. And some turkey, but she thinks his dog may have taken that.

He is so close that his nose touches hers and when he blinks at her he goes cross-eyed.

"Last time you kissed me," She says, taking pity on his frown of confusion. "You ran away and no one saw you for so long."

He pulls away a little and stares at her, his jaw dropping so low she imagines she hears it click.

She smiles and brings a hand up to his face, brushing her fingers down his cheek like she did all those years ago.

"Of course I knew it was you." She says in response to a question he hasn't asked. She does that a lot, she realises, and one day it's going to get her into even more trouble than this last time has. "I don't let just anyone kiss me beneath the mistletoe you know."

She laughs brightly when he catches her by the waist and swings her around until her back is pressed against the wall.

"You were my first kiss." She says as he brushes his lips across her cheek, her neck, her nose.

He grunts and mumbles something that could be his way of telling her it was the same for him. His hands settle on her hips, thumbs stroking her through her dress. She moans and leans back against the rock for support.

Her hands grip at the hair on his chest, just beneath the ridiculous Father Christmas coat he wore all day.

She knows he threw the party a little for Cindy-Lou and a little for her. She realises that he is never going to move back down into Whoville, even if he is willing to look at the Whos in a new light again. She is surprisingly okay with that.

Now that she knows he is alive, knows that he will welcome her when he sees her; the distance between her home and his doesn’t seem quite so far anymore.

She bends her neck back as he nibbles the line of her jaw.

She's made the journey once and it didn't kill her, she can make it every night if she has to.

Finally, his lips brush against the corner of her own and she gasps, tugging him closer. Everything these last few days has been leading up to this, since the moment she saw him again in the town square, so near and yet...

His lips catch her own and she presses up into the kiss, eyes closed. He is at once the little boy with the blue suit and green Mohawk she first saw, and the fully grown man who lifts her and holds her against the wall of his home while her legs wrap around his waist and her dress rises up scandalously.

***

 **vi.**

"I've loved you since we were three years old." She whispers later, tucked up against his side.

He snuffles and murmurs agreement, pulling her even closer. She smiles, not needing to hear what she has known since he handed her the little metal angel.

She rests her head on his chest, her hand curling up beside her nose. Beneath her ear, the Grinch's heart beats steadily and Martha falls asleep.

 

 **  
_End._   
**


End file.
